There exists in the art a medicine supply device that is configured to indicate a receiving compartment, to which a medicine is to be placed, by turning on a guide means provided in association with the receiving compartments respectively based on a prescription data, and to allow a display means provided separately from the guide means to display the quantity of one dose of the medicine (see, e.g., Patent Document 1).
In the aforementioned Patent Document 1, the guide means provided at the receiving compartment indicates where the receiving compartment for receiving the medicine locates. However, as for the quantity of the medicine to be placed, there is a need to confirm the displayed contents of the display means provided separately. Thus, this requires the user to shift his eyes extensively, which leads to errors in the quantity of the medicine to be placed.
Further, there exists in the art another medicine supply device wherein a plurality of compartments are formed lengthwise and breadthwise in a preliminary distribution cassette and a display means is provided for indicating the position or range of the compartments to be used according to the content of a prescription for manual distribution (see, e.g., Patent Document 2). There exists in the art yet another medicine supply device including a means for displaying the number of measures used in a preliminary distribution cassette (see, e.g., Patent Document 3).
In the aforementioned Patent Documents 2 and 3, only the number of the measures used in the preliminary distribution cassette is displayed, thus indicating the number of the measures, to which medicine is manually distributed. However, it is uncertain which and how much medicine is to be manually distributed to which measures. That is, efficient performance of a manual distribution task for the medicines cannot be expected.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2004-203433
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Publication No. 2509821
Patent Document 3: Japanese Patent Publication No. 2866543